RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Inscriptions
such as stone, metal, clay, ivory, and wood, intended to designate the source or purpose of an object, and also with documents which, on account of general or permanent interest, are inscribed on durable material, usually stone or metal. This comparatively new science has hitherto devoted its attention chiefly to the days of the early Church, but it is hoped that more attention will be paid to the collection and study of medieval and later inscriptions which are in danger of perishing with the lapse of time.
1. Ancient Christian Inscriptions: (1) Letters and figures. The workmen who made the earliest Christian inscriptions adopted the letters and numeral system of their pre-
1. Methods of
Writina1 decessors, which was already old, and continued its development steadily, except in cases of deliberate archaism. Thus by degrees new forms arose, more slowly in some places than in others, and usually later in the provinces than in Rome. At the date of the earliest Christian inscriptions, there were three principal types of characters: one used for carving on stone or metal, one for painting on walls or woodwork, which corresponded to that inscribed on parchment or papyrus, and the vulgar or cursive script, which was either impressed on soft material such as wax, fresh clay, or plaster, or scratched on a hard surface, especially walls (the so-called graffito). These three types were not always sharply distinguished, and Christian epigraphy shows examples that can with difficulty be assigned to any of the three classes, and others in which the forms appear in a confused mixture — sometimes even one half of a letter being in monumental and the other half in painter's script. The most important class of letters, in the Christian as in the older pagan inscriptions, is the capitals, including the largest number of symbols for letters and numbers. Besides these there were the uncial forms, developed from the capitals by the rounding off of sharp angles, and the cursive form, which sought for speed in writing by using as few separate strokes as possible. This last form occurs among the dated inscriptions in Rome as early as 291. (2) Ligatures. In the formation of words the letters are sometimes separate, sometimes two or more are united into a single symbol. These ligatures were originally peculiar to coins, where the limited space made them useful, and then were adopted in inscriptions. The rule for reading them was that each element entering into their composition was to be read only once. From the ligatures developed the monogrammatic signs, which continued even in the Middle Ages to be employed for imperial signatures and the like. (3) Abbreviations. The words may be either written in full or abbreviated, sometimes to a single letter. The omission of letters is indicated by strokes or projections above, below, or beside the letters, or by periods and other signs following them. Connected with these signs are the strokes frequently, though not invariably, placed over numbers to distinguish them from ordinary letters. (4) Punctuation. A large number of various punctuation-marks were used. The commonest is the period, usually written, not on the line, but half-way up the letters; its shape is
generally round or approximately so; sometimes it is represented by a small circle, and less often by two sides of a triangle in various positions. Out of this latter form developed leaves, somewhat like ivy-leaves, which used to be considered as intended for pierced hearts, and thus as signs of martyrdom. Occasionally the Greek cross, or even the Chi Rho, is used as a punctuation-mark. It was the rule in the classical period to place punctuation-marks only within lines, not at the end, but in many Christian monuments this rule is not observed; indeed, in many the entire system of punctuation is irregular, points being placed even in the middle of words— though this is to be distinguished from " syllabic punctuation," where the syllables were divided to facilitate reading. (5) Direction of the writing. Writing from right to left had become very rare among the Greeks and Romans at the date of the earliest Christian inscriptions, and only a few instances of it occur among them. While no certain example of the ancient boustrophedon form is known, there are a number which are read downward, and arrangements still less usual exist, dictated sometimes by the shape of the space at command, but in other cases probably by nothing more than a love of singularity.
The great majority of extant early Christian inscriptions are in Latin, Greek coming next. Even
in the West there is a considerable
n" number of Greek inscriptions, generally
Emoloved ^or or ^y people who were not Greeks,
but Romans. This phenomenon finds a parallel in the fact that the earliest Christian literature was in Greek, even when the authors lived in the West. The parallel, however, must not be pressed too far, since they were educated men, while most of those to whom the inscriptions are due belonged to the lower classes. The number of Greek inscriptions, even in Rome, is to be explained by the fact that in the primitive Church Greek was the official language. All the third-century popes who are buried in the catacombs of St. Calixtus have Greek inscriptions, while Cornelius, whose grave is in his family burying-ground, has a Latin one. The mixture of Greek and Latin in a number of inscriptions is probably due less to defective education than to an instinctive opposition in people's minds to the use of a language which was really foreign to them. An interesting light is thus thrown upon the final struggle of the two languages in the West, beginning while Greek was still the ecclesiastical tongue. After the second century Greek inscriptions and those showing a mixture of Greek and Latin become increasingly rare, and Pope Damasus uses nothing but Latin. The linguistic qualities of the inscriptions deserve careful study as giving an insight which cannot be obtained from literature into the speech of the common people. While departures from classical orthography are to be attributed partly to ignorance or carelessness, this is not so much the case with the vocabulary and the grammar, which in many of the later Latin inscriptions clearly show the transition to the Romance languages. The inscriptions are, like the pagan ones, either in prose or in verse, prose inscriptions being the more numerous,
Inscriptions